


safe house

by youaremarvelous



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Headaches & Migraines, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 15:52:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15975551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youaremarvelous/pseuds/youaremarvelous
Summary: Keith feels it creep in that morning over breakfast, but it’s dull. A clenching tightness in his neck, a dark pulsing in his temple. He pours himself into his tea and pointedly ignores the way the overhead lights glint off of it, piercing daggers into his left eyes.He can still breathe, he can stillthink, so there’s no need to alert Shiro. For as much as the migraines have been an unexpected hardship following the battle against Sendak’s fleet and the severe concussion it left him with, Keith is starting to learn how to live with them, or at the very least how to live around them.





	safe house

Keith feels it creep in that morning over breakfast, but it’s dull. A clenching tightness in his neck, a dark pulsing in his temple. He pours himself into his tea and pointedly ignores the way the overhead lights glint off of it, piercing daggers into his left eyes. He can still breathe, he can still _think_ , so there’s no need to alert Shiro. For as much as the migraines have been an unexpected hardship following the battle against Sendak’s fleet and the severe concussion it left him with, Keith is starting to learn how to live with them, or at the very least how to live around them.

 

He tips his head back to stretch his neck and tries to disguise it as a yawn. It’s a pointless gesture because Shiro doesn’t notice. He’s scanning through notes on his laptop, studying up for a Voltron Coalition meeting later that morning.  

 

“You ready?” Keith asks, stealing a piece of bacon from the forgotten breakfast cooling at Shiro’s elbow.

 

Shiro startles and glances up. He looks so young, bathed in blue light, mouth tilted and awkward. “As much as I’ll ever be.”

 

The tension screwed into Keith’s face softens with a fond smile. “You’ll do great.”

 

He does, but Keith can’t stick around to enjoy it.

 

Midway through, Shiro’s words stop making sense and the pain sharpens behind Keith’s eye, cleaving his brain in half and sticking his stomach to the back of his throat. Keith stumbles his way half-blind from the conference room. Light and color and noise swirl into a dizzy stew of agony. He’s certain his brain is moments away from exploding out of his eye socket and painting the alien delegates in vivid hues of bloody carmine.

 

He makes it to a bathroom, though he’s not entirely sure how. He folds himself into a stall, presses his eyes to his knees, and breathes. Or at least tries to. Time is lost to the static in his hands and feet, the throbbing of his heart in the corner of his skull. Keith doesn’t know if it’s been one minute or twenty when a big hand settles on the back of his neck. It’s a testament to his misery that he doesn’t even flinch.  

 

“Shiro?” Keith’s voice is a scrape.

 

“No, buddy, it’s me,” Hunk whispers. Keith can feel him kneel down beside him, brush his hair back from his temple. “You want me to get him?”

 

Keith does, but he can’t bring himself to say it. The migraines always knock the feet out from under him, but he can endure it. Watching Shiro adopt his mantle as the captain of the Atlas—become a beacon of strength and hope in eyes other than his own—has been one of the greatest joys of his life. As much as he knows Shiro would kick his ass six ways to Sunday for picking his priorities for him, Keith’s not going to drag him away over a headache.

 

“No,” Keith says when he trusts himself to open his mouth. The word is wrung from his throat, graveled out by pain. “Just…give me a minute.”

 

“Okay, man. No rush.” Hunk sits back on his heels and rubs a hand up and down Keith’s back, massaging his fingers into the tight muscles at the base of his neck. “Do you think you can sit up?”

 

Keith doesn’t reply so much as groan. Thinking is a stretch. His cognitive function is thoroughly burned out by the bursts of bright pain singing through his sinuses, but he’s nothing if not stubborn. He screws his nails into his knees, his teeth into his bottom lip, and pulls himself up. The knife in his temple sharpens with the change in elevation. Keith tilts his head back, dizzy and breathless, stars shimmering behind his eyelids.

 

“Okay, buddy, you got it. Deep breaths,” Hunk soothes. If a tear works its way down Keith’s cheek, neither of them mention of it. “Let’s get you home, okay?”

 

Home is a walk through the Garrison and short drive away, but to Keith it stretches out vast and unending, like the desert outside his front door when he was a kid. He clenches his eyes closed and turns his head against the partition wall. In the back of his head, flushing through the dense, throbbing pain, he sees a moonless sky and cold riverbeds of black water.

 

“Can you—” he swallows around the acetic saliva flooding his mouth. “Can you help me get to Black?”

 

Hunk presses his lips together. “Is that the migraine talking? Shiro said you can get a little loopy when—”

 

“Hunk,” Keith pleads, voice like mist. “Please.”

 

Somehow, Keith manages to walk there on his own feet. He has to stop twice. Once, to slump against a wall, long, coltish legs bending unwittingly beneath him, then again to heave into the thick jojoba bushes skirting the Garrison walls, but he makes it—shaky, sweaty, impressing a permanent dimple into Hunk’s shirt from his death grip in it, but whole.

 

Keith crawls into the cockpit while Hunk keeps watch from the ground. It’s cooler in Black, quieter. The thrumming ache doesn’t recede completely, but it’s muted. He curls into the seat—knees under his chin—and bends his pounding temple against the armrest. He can’t sleep, but he closes his eyes and sinks into deep wells of inky dark shadow.

 

He feels it when Shiro finds him. His presence bends around him like a cold current, the easy swing of his gait, the subtle notes of laundry detergent mixed with sweat.

 

“Keith?” A callused palm presses against his forehead.

 

“Mm,” Keith opens his eyes, two slices of slate gray, pale as a puddle. He pushes himself up in his seat. “How’d the meeting go?”  

 

Shiro smoothes a thumb over his eyebrow. “Fine,” he whispers. “You should’ve let Hunk get me.”

 

“S’okay. You were busy.”

 

Shiro stares at Keith, eyebrows furrowed. He looks sad, or maybe it’s the vapor white light of his new arm twisting down his mouth, creasing his eyes with concern. “I’m never too busy for you.” He slides under Keith’s armpit. “Up.”

 

Keith obeys because his brain is too addled not to. Shiro takes his place in the cockpit seat and drags Keith down to his lap. He cradles Keith’s head against his shoulder, drapes his endless legs over the armrest.

 

“Better?” Shiro asks. Keith can feel the warmth of his breath against his cheek.  

 

“Yeah,” Keith says, and then, because it’s ingrained, “sorry.”

 

Shiro’s hold on him tightens. He kneads his knuckles into the side of Keith’s skull, right over the epicenter of pulsing pain, like his fingers are dowsing rods, dispersing Keith’s discomfort their precious treasure.

 

The tight knot in Keith’s head unravels gradually, and he melts into Shiro like a puppet with cut strings, loose and boneless.

 

“I love you,” Shiro says after a long moment. He presses a kiss to the side of Keith’s head. “Don’t ever apologize for that.”

 

Black thrums with residual energy, a polished rock skipping across a dark lake, the oily flap of a raven’s wing settling on a branch. A low gentle purr.

 

They’ve spent their lives adapting to seemingly insurmountable odds. The loss of Keith’s family,  Shiro’s abduction, the persisting threat to the universe looming over their heads like a flat-bottomed storm cloud.

 

But learning to accept Shiro’s love as a given, not a reward for perfect health, for perfect selflessness. That, Keith thinks, sinking into painless sleep, is something he can easily learn to live with.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/)


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